Displaying items by tag: United Kingdom

The former UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said he was deeply concerned that the UK’s export credit agency had provided billions of pounds in recent years to support businesses involved in oil and gas schemes around the world. ‘These figures and policies are hard to reconcile with the UK’s commitments under the Paris agreement,’ said Ban, referring to the international climate deal he forged in 2015 as UN chief. ‘The time has come for the UK to change course, in the interests of the whole world,’ he wrote in a comment for the Guardian. Pray that the Government’s priority, at home and abroad, will be to forge opportunities for UK businesses to resist investing in or funding fossil fuel projects. Recent projects supported by the UK include oil and gas fields off the coast of Ghana, a major gas pipeline in Oman, and software for an oil firm in Argentina.

Research has found that 24% of boys aged 16 to 24 in the UK self-harm. Sadly, the culture of men not showing emotions or talking through their emotional concerns has a direct link to the suicide rate in older men. Young men need to talk about their feelings and emotions before they become men who haven’t learnt how to, and feel they have no way of coping but to take their own lives. Self-harm in young men and teenage boys may exhibit differently from females. Males self-poison with paracetamol or ibuprofen as a way of coping with daily anxieties and fears; the next highest form of self-harm in young men is cutting and hanging. Punching walls or regularly fighting are forms of self-harm that are missed because the behaviour is seen as aggressive rather than emotional.

Councils are accused of hiding the scale of the rough sleeping crisis in England by changing the way they compiled figures for the 2018 official count. For example, Southend had 72 people sleeping rough in 2017. Then in 2018 they did their street count on one especially cold night late November night and submitted a street count of 11. Official government statistics reported a 2% fall in rough sleeping in England in 2018 after seven consecutive years of rises. Critics suggest the fall in official numbers does not reflect the reality of homelessness. Homeless charity Crisis estimated that over 22,000 people spent Christmas sleeping rough or in cars, trains, buses or tents. The official figure was 4,677. We can pray that this report will highlight councils’ smokescreens, and prompt authorities to face the reality of our rough sleeping crisis and do more to eradicate it.

A Twitter video of a street preacher’s arrest in London has been viewed over 1.8 million times. It shows the man confronted by two police officers warning he would be arrested for a breach of the peace if he refuses to leave the area. One said, 'You're disturbing people, you're causing problems, and you're breaching their peace.' The man says, 'I need to tell people Jesus is the only way, the truth and the life’, to which the officer replies, 'I appreciate that, but nobody wants to hear that, they want you to go away’. When the man told his reasons for preaching, they handcuffed him and took his Bible. The preacher said, 'No, no, no, don't take my Bible away!’ It is unclear what he said that triggered the incident. An eyewitness said, ‘This man was preaching and did nothing wrong, he had a hostile person near him.’ He was later released.

A review was launched into working practices at Amnesty International after two staff members, Gaetan Mootoo and Rosalind McGregor, committed suicide last year. The review found that ‘organisational culture and management failures’ were the root cause of deep staff unhappiness in Amnesty’s ‘toxic culture’ of workplace bullying. Their efforts to address its problems were described as ‘ad hoc, reactive, and inconsistent’, and the senior leadership team was described as out-of-touch, incompetent and callous. There was bullying, harassment, sexism, racism, and poor management. Decentralising the organisation from its global headquarters in London had caused unnecessary turmoil and compounded job pressures. Seven management team members acknowledged that there was a climate of tension and mistrust, and have offered to resign.

Unless there is a postponement or a second referendum, the UK will leave (or partly leave) the EU on 29 March. Whatever the exact outcome, this will mark a watershed in our nation’s history and lead to a time of much disruption. The call to prayer is therefore urgent. Christians are primarily citizens of Heaven, and need to be about the King’s business. Pray that the Lord will give Christians, both rural and urban, renewed strength to show exemplary love for one another (John 13:34-35), ‘preach the word in season and out of season’, and to walk as ‘children of light’ in the midst of a dark world.

The head of MI6 says that after spending four years with a bloodthirsty terror group, Shamima Begum is ‘potentially very dangerous’, because once someone has been in that environment they will have treacherous skills and connections. A ‘very significant level of resource’ is required to ‘make sure she doesn’t represent a threat’. The Home Office plans to strip her of British citizenship, stating that as her parents are Bangladeshis she can apply for Bangladeshi citizenship. The Syrian Kurdish forces are calling on the UK to take responsibility for its own citizens. If they are not taken back, the Kurds could try them in their own courts for partaking in IS activities. This push-and-pull keeps Shamima and many others in legal limbo, unwanted by either group. See

‘We love our country, and believe Britain deserves so much better than our broken politics. Read our statement and join us: http://www.theindependent.group/statement. #ChangePolitics’ was the tweet announcing a break in political parties. Three Tory MPs abandoned their seats on one side of Whitehall to sit with eight former Labour MPs who had themselves left Jeremy Corbyn’s party. These 11 independents might be the outriders of a new party. With Labour leaning further left and Tories shifting to the far right, the new group declare themselves free of extremes. We can pray that as winds of change blow through our Government, God’s Spirit will fill every fracture being created with kingdom values. Pray for Parliament to have at its heart the purposes of God’s Kingdom.

Scottish MP John Mason says that people’s conversations and prayers verge on panic at the thought of Brexit. Yet, in the light of eternity and God’s unchanging love for us, why is our relationship with the EU so very important? He quotes the hymn which says, ‘Because He lives I can face tomorrow, because He lives all fear is gone, because I know He holds the future, and life is worth the living just because He lives’. He said, ‘We are in the world, but not of it. Even if those around us are worried or even panicking, we should be the ones who are at peace about the future.’ We can pray for those who are fearful about where their family’s future lies, or worried about their jobs or the future of their business. Pray for more people to know the peace that only Jesus can give.

National Farmers Union (NFU) president Minette Batters stated at their 2019 conference that the Government needs to convene a new commission of food and farming experts to establish the principles to maintain British food production standards post-Brexit. Mrs Batter wants this commission to ensure that food imports will have the same high standards as the ones British farmers adhere to, and trade deals will be scrutinised by Parliament and industry. Crucially, there must be a commitment that the Government will act on these recommendations. The NFU also has ambitious plans to tackle greenhouse gas emissions and for British farming to aim to achieve net zero by 2040 by investing in incentivising carbon capture from the atmosphere and biofuels to power carbon capture storage systems. See